DISTRICT TELLS SCHOOLS TO ELIMINATE 1 POSITION

Announcement a surprise; some irked at late notice

San Diego 
Days before most San Diego schools close for summer, principals are scrambling to cut their teaching staffs for the coming year under a surprise district budget amendment announced this week.

The San Diego Unified School District has not called for layoffs at this late date. Rather it has directed schools to eliminate one position from their staff to help save money.

Schools have been told to fill any vacant classroom teaching positions with a qualified employee from their support staff — literacy and math specialists among them. Superintendent Cindy Marten asked schools to submit faculty plans by Friday.

Some teachers have complained about the short notice and the impact the cuts will have at their schools.

Shane Parmely, a teacher at Garfield and Twain high schools, said the move is disruptive and will leave more “excessed” teachers unable to prepare for next year’s classes over the summer because they don’t know their assignment.

“If I don’t know where I’m teaching until school starts. I’m not writing any curriculum, I’m not doing any lesson plans,” Parmely said. “We’re not prepping. We are losing valuable time.”

The plan to trim personnel would help San Diego Unified offset unexpected expenses in the 2014-15 school year, including Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposal that all districts gradually increase their contribution to the state teacher retirement program — from 8.25 percent to 19 percent. That could cost San Diego Unified $6 million next year.

Although schools were surprised by the directive to cut staff, it fits into a broader effort to “right size” a district that has grappled with declining enrollment for years, said district spokesman Moises Aguirre.

“We want to be strategic about hiring and how we deploy new teachers,” he said.

Even as it works to reduce its teaching force, San Diego Unified faces a massive hiring spree in the coming weeks since 472 veteran teachers accepted a financial incentive to retire. By nudging seasoned teachers off the payroll, the district will save $8 million next year by filling some spots with new hires at the lower end of the pay scale and eliminating other jobs altogether.

Bill Freeman, president of the San Diego Education Association, said the way the superintendent rolled out her plan — without giving the union advance notice — undermines the effort itself.

“I believe that what’s she’s trying to do is worthy — I believe she is trying to fill from within so any vacant positions aren’t filled with new hires. They are filled with existing educators,” he said. “The problem that it creates is that it is top-down, the schools didn’t have a chance for their governance teams to meet….”

As the school board discussed the budget and staffing cuts Tuesday, protesting teachers carried signs that showed pictures of board members and referred to the SDUSD Hunger Games.

“Everybody says, it’s like the Hunger Games, they all just want us to send somebody for sacrifice,” Parmely said.

In the latest version of the district spending plan, the deficit to next year’s $1.1 billion operating budget has dropped from $115 million to $106 million, in part because the state increased the amount it will give the district in per-student daily attendance revenue. The district will balance its budget with a variety of cost-cutting measures that include selling real estate, cutting expenses in the central office and teacher retirements.